Drinks with Dead Poets

by Glyn Maxwell

  ‘Well it’s someones vagabond, see they’re everywhere these days.’

  The cowardice of calculation, the gutlessness of letting numbers make the case. Market force, mere profit turned to some holy power. Drives the strong to do to the weak what thugs and conmen do -rob them, fool them, scam them, leave them starving or frozen, ignorant, sick, crippled. Price them out of homes, turn their hearts against the helpless, stab the skyline with investments,

  ‘I think we’ll take the short cut,’

  Write filth about them, blacken names, disrobe, dishonour, tap the phone-calls of the dead and call it free speech. . . market force the yardstick, dead stake in a wilderness, withered hearts all shrinking from the glories. Self-serving dogma, all’s blessed or damned, let the old caveman urges force the law, same black-or-white morality when nature’s freakin rainbow, my England is in fucking hiding.

  ‘I’m steering you home in case you don’t yet know the way,’

  That’s the churchyard, it isn’t the churchyard,

  ‘Yes it’s the scenic route,’

  I don’t live in this churchyard Tina I dwell by it,

  ‘Ah my actual name, am I cats or dogs, am I analogue?’

  You’re analogue Minnaloushe,

  ‘Ah a pet-name, that’s forward,’

  On a field that’s been enclosed

  ‘Oh I see we’ve jumped back there,’

  The common man’s a vagabond,

  ‘Is it this house or the next one?’

  Digital makes him look a fool, world of one-and-zero makes the fives and sixes and nine-and-a-halves look like vagabonds – makes those who do the work that makes life bearable — guiding, caring, consoling, healing – makes them seem like fools and wastrels, it wolfs down their time on earth, pays them nothing for it -

  ‘And to think I was there when the Truth was revealed!’

  Pays its ones and zeroes to the One-and-Zero people,

  ‘This sounds like Dr Who now, do you actually have a key its hard to believe you live somewhere, how did that slip through the system?’

  I don’t know how anything happened,

  ‘Where’s the light, do you have a light?’

  We have to go up the stairs now,

  ‘Did I say I was coming with you?’

  I need guidance

  ‘Glynn Maxwell, first man ever to get lost on a staircase,’

  Twelve stairs from here

  ‘Twelve stairs?’

  Eight stairs, six stairs

  ‘Look you left your light on,’

  Yes beauty it is the light of the world

  ‘You don’t even lock it, moron, oh my god he’s got CDs how

  sweet,’

  Where was I where was I

  ‘Not a clue, do you have any Bowie though,’

  Probably actually yes

  ‘I’m taking my boots off, but only coz they’re hurting, it’s your place you pour the wine,’

  I have no idea how we got here

  ‘Officer, sure – does this have Sound and Vision?’

  It should do, it’s a Best of

  ‘Heroes, Golden Years. . . Sound and Vision!’

  Disaster I might dance to that

  ‘Disaster doesn’t cover it, why won’t it play, the red light’s on’

  It’s on radio

  ‘Why, there’s no signal here’

  I listen to the white noise Tina

  ‘That’s cos you’re a vagabond!’

  What? CAN’T HEAR

  ‘I SAID THAT’S COS YOU’RE A VAGABOND!

  * * *

  Week Nine - November 21st

  I wander by the edge

  Of this desolate lake

  Where wind cries in the sedge:

  Until the axle break

  That keeps the stars in their round,

  And hands hurl in the deep

  The banners of East and West,

  And the girdle of light is unbound,

  Your breast will not lie by the breast

  Of your beloved in sleep.

  And there she is, whatever this is. The light is barely blue outside but blue it is, and I’m at my desk where I discover four books open.

  Three written books as ever, one empty book I mean to fill and one day you’ll find empty, I sit here with them, hauled towards them, jolted up and out for the purpose but nothing comes and there she is, there’s Miss Christine Sara Yeager in pale and puzzled half-sleep, dignified in dreaming, soft breath without opinion or a care in the turning world.

  I had beaten Time to my desk again, had outrun myself for I was there before I knew it, blank and staring like a creature on every day remaining, but I can’t write a word, I can only gaze at her curved back in its bunched grey jersey, in her sighing fitful peace, I can summon up some fragments.

  It’s very early on the Thursday, on the one day. These are the physics of the place I reached and I’m reconciled to that, but there are memories – she and I on a brisk walk in fog by the lagoon, a fierce little handshake, her Moominland umbrella she’s brought in case we need, a lazy brunch in a brazen cafe window, she and I avoiding the Coach House, she with her po-faced hiss, proceeding on tiptoe, a quiz-night somewhere no one knows us, we came third and got rosettes I kept – days that can’t be Thursdays at all, nights I can’t begin to place. . .

  I don’t recall the moment this couldn’t help but happen.

  ‘But it isn’t official. . .’

  Her back’s been turned but now she turns this way and speaks in sleep and I can dimly see her features through her tumbled hair. In my own half-sleep she was someone else and I shivered with our warm backs touching, hers arched, mine straight. I detached and rose and looked and was calm. Now she’s her, serene, her busy daily doing self laid down to rest for a set time. On my rug her pale underthings are perched on her overthings.

  The grey jersey’s mine but there’s other stuff of hers in my quiet attic room. There’s a pink hold-all pushed under this desk, that plump thriller she likes face-down on the rug by her little snow-white sneakers, her long dark coat on a hook by the door, like her minder cast the old blind eye.

  Last night, once more, was nights ago.

  Is this how I get Fridays, Saturdays, Tuesdays? Is this all I had to do? But it’s Thursday now so I can’t tell. I may have imagined it. I may have remembered it, but those flickering lights in the brain light one cavern-realm between them:

  A memory cries at the threshold But I happened! Gatekeeper -That’s what they all say squire. Memory – But I REALLY happened! Dream says Ah come and join us then!

  The wind is old and still at play

  While I must hurry upon my way,

  For I am running to Paradise

  I have to be somewhere. Before dawn there’s a place to be. I would dearly like to be here, but I have to be elsewhere, do my work like she does hers. I leaf the diaphanous pages of the book for an apposite exit-whisper:

  I must be gone – there is a grave

  Where daffodil and lily wave,

  And I would please the hapless faun,

  Buried under the sleepy ground,

  With mirthful songs before the dawn –

  ‘Maxwell?’

  (I’m actually halfway out the door) What?

  ‘Tell me you’re not affiliated.’

  I’m not affiliated. I promised my class we’d go on this Walk at dawn.

  ‘Walk what walk. . . ’

  The Compass Walk, I told you.

  ‘It’s not official. . .’

  (But this was said in the settling down again, the dozing away, the last word muffled in the blankets, and I said see you later and went creaking on downstairs.)

  *

  I imagine I’m late but I’m almost the first. Three small shadowy figures are huddled along the frozen lane in the fog by the Keats fence. One is hopping from boot to boot, bashing his/her mitts together – his, that’s Ollie Faraday – another, Iona? is wrapped around a thermos of salvation, and a third has
to be Molly Dunn in a hood and her misted specs. Ollie declares: ‘Time is blue for the early ones,’ as he knows about the Compass Walk, knows what you have to say when you’re where. He and Iona have helped me set it up, the invites and the handouts, but Molly says: ‘Sorry blue’s not an abstraction, Oil,’ as Iona lifts a lid of scalding onion soup my way, warning me ‘blow, blow,’ and some new arrivals come chattering, stamping through the fog.

  Here’s Blanche and Isabella in their great big Barboury coats, and then all grumbling happily at the hour and the oddity come Roy Ford, Kornelia and Peter Grain, well-equipped as always, then bareheaded Heath in his bomber jacket, both steaming and smoking, ‘knocked for Niall, got no answer,’ – it being too cold for pronouns — brrr, dashes too, it’s freezing, and here’s C Jellicoe playing mother with a paper-bag of pastries, finally Lily in an elongated bumble-bee mad jersey and Samira in full make-up behind the green dot of her e-cig, each one blaming the other for making them late.

  (I shout till they all pipe down) no one’s late, there is no time here!

  ‘Were thirteen,’ Orlando tallies and reports.

  You may be thirteen, but Im one and you’re twelve.

  ‘Apostles eh,’ suggests Peter,

  Coincidence,

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘So does one of us have to betray you?’ cries Isabella, giddy and bright and back on a school trip,

  Not until you’ve kissed me (I reason from scripture)

  ‘Get you all sharp in the morning,’ goes Lily, sipping the lid of soup till Samira’s prised it from her.

  Heath fist-bumps with Roy Ford and asks ‘sup man, is Mimi coming?’

  Blanche turns in her waxen jacket, ‘what are you high,’ while Caroline finally offers me that last croissant I’d prayed for.

  Saddlers is open? (I wonder with a smile)

  ‘It doesn’t come from Saddlers,’ she informs me without one, ‘They don’t taste very abstract,’ Molly’s munching and let’s start:

  WELCOME TO THE COMPASS WALK.

  IN THE NORTH it is cold, blue, and almost silent. Youve been here before, youve never been here, youll be here again. It is late and early, outside of Time. It’s the midnight before and the midnight after. It’s the shortest coldest day of the year it is winter, it is dawn, it is mist and snow and ice and stone, it is death, it is new life.

  All we can speak while we dwell in the North is abstract, theoretical, intangible, thin air.

  *

  They’re all looking at my pebble-blue handout. Weird. Mental. Excellent. Don’t Get It.

  ‘In. . . teresting. . .’ Roy begins, warily, and they start to join in:

  ‘What we do,’ Isabella says solemnly, ‘is not what we always do. . . ’ It’s before all things (I help them along)

  ‘And after all things,’ Heath grunts, which sets him off coughing.

  ‘Time is with us and against us,’ states Peter, glancing at me for approval.

  ‘Is things abstract?’ Molly demands through crumbs, and with a nod of the north I adjudicate it is.

  I will do new things today (I only say to keep it going)

  ‘Thats more East, isn’t it?’ Ollie argues, ‘saying what you mean to do?’

  ‘This boy’s the authority,’ Iona apologizes.

  He’s absolutely right. I know nothing of today.

  *

  One of the many poets I don’t know how to teach this term is William Butler Yeats. Who’ll be reading here tonight, remember. You’re not excused coming to that just because you came to this. I don’t care if you’re not in my class, I’m not a proper class I’m elective, I’m -

  ‘You’re saying you don’t understand Yeats?’

  I can do the line-by-line stuff, I could tell you how the sounds work, I could reference the politics or myths or heritage, I can do that till the cows evolve and put their hooves up asking questions, Samira, there’s plenty I could do in William’s green enchanted garden, but all I want from him, for you, is what I drew from him, and I could draw from nowhere else: his systems.

  I encountered Yeats’s systems of everything in my first summer at Oxford. His systems are fantastically intricate and complex, his twenty-eight terrible phases of the Moon, his types and temperaments that fit within each phase, and then the whole cosmic kaboodle super-imposed on the ages of humanity. This culminates in astounding poems like ‘The Second Coming’, where the gyres are spirals of world history, and it’s his System – not some metaphor conjured on the run – that sprouts the appalling vision at the end. This isn’t a North poem at all, his North poems are fairyland, pattern and song, but this is to warm us up for the great man young and old, and all I want from us in the North is hushed contemplation: how is a monstrous miracle like this poem ever reached,? Now be quiet.

  Turning and turning in the widening gyre

  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  Surely some revelation is at hand;

  Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

  The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

  When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

  Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

  A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

  A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

  Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

  Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

  The darkness drops again; but now I know

  That twenty centuries of stony sleep

  Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

  And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

  We have come to give you metaphors for poetry. . . This rough beast is generated by the poet’s own private system. Which decrees that two thousand years after the birth of Christ some god-awful Diametric Opposite will hatch. Well yes your attitude to this depends how central or special the Christ-figure is to you, whether you think time counts in thousands, what good you think faith does us, what it means if the Good Book is a gospel and what it means if it’s, well, a good book. For we jumped through the hoops of 2000 and nothing really ended, unless you maintain it did, and you can catch that cowardly end-of-days horseshit on a million screens on Sundays in America, most anywhere really, so don’t go thinking mine is the majority viewpoint. Anyhow this poem was written in 1919, with Europe a gibbering smoking wreck. What poet worth his salt wouldn’t roam the chaos in search of legible pattern? Poor old Michael Finnegan begin again.

  But I’m not talking about what it is, I’m talking about how one poet found it. How he got to write poems that have the force of flaming scripture. Perhaps the world trying to tell you all that scripture is? but let’s not go there.

  I was twenty, a young twenty, doing my own slouching thank you, but I was transfixed by Yeats’s systems. That you could make them with – you could make them, Mr Grain, with your compass and protractor, now I know why you always have them! you could draw a circle on the page and explain the whole wide world inside it. I was all Magic Markers, rainbow labels, tracing paper, because I thought I’d do my own. My own system. And my own is very simple, a child could and in fact did do it, we could cover it in a page. We are, we’re covering it in a day, on our Compass Walk, in our village. And I do not want it mentioned to our visitor tonight! I don’t want to see his gaze blank and pitiless as the sun. For it’s my humble little system, and it’s served me for a thousand years. . .

  Now we’ll walk. We walk from midnight on the clock-face, we walk clockwise round the 1 and 2 towards the 3, and yes I know it’s not really 3, throw your watches overboard, don’t get literal on me now, we
’re walking January February March towards our leafy Library in silence, then I’ll read a poem when I’m ready, then we arrive in the East, we clear?

  ‘Clear,’ say one or two as we set off down the lane, clear as light,’ ‘is light abstract?’ clear as abstract light,’ ‘light means light,’ no means no,’ ‘ha! coming from you,’ what’s that when it’s at home,’ ‘home’s not abstract,’ ‘fucking well is to me guys,’ ‘language, language,’ ‘fairy down, need back-up,’ ‘language isn’t abstract either,’ ‘fairies are,’ ‘you calling me abstract?’ ‘if the cap fits,’ ‘cap’s not abstract, mate,’ ‘mine is, check it out,’ okay gang how about we walk east in silence?

  *

  Where the wave of moonlight glosses

  The dim gray sands with light,

  Far off by furthest Rosses

  We foot it all the night,

  Weaving olden dances,

  Mingling hands and mingling glances

  Till the moon has taken flight;

  To and fro we leap

  And chase the frothy bubbles,

  While the world is full of troubles

  And is anxious in its sleep.

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. . .

  *

  IN THE EAST it is temperate, green, and we hear birdsong All you can see is growing, and your mind is full of hopes. It is early, it is spring, it is youth, apprenticeship. It’s young love, first kiss, first heartbreak, the dream of The One. It’s innocence and guilt and both gone by noon. It’s high cloud and sun through showers, it’s soon, it’s coming.

  All we can speak while we dwell in the East is hopeful and foreseeing, making plans, dreams.

  *

  The Library really is to the east of the village, by a wide road that bends through the brown trees either shedding or bereft, the large houses sunken back down wooden steps on both sides in restless leaf-cascades, then a brook is suddenly audible, splashing away in the early light, and it’s here, the set-back clearing we come to, some giggling, some chatting, some reading aloud the next page which is lime-green in colour.